Shutterstock is 10 years old today

10 years ago today, in my New York City apartment, I started Shutterstock. You’ve probably heard about how I needed affordable images for a business I was building, went out, bought a Canon Rebel and shot thousands of pictures to put on a site I coded myself. It doesn’t feel like that long ago, and it’s incredible to see how what started as a simple challenge has become a resource for so many people around the world.

There were moments over the years that were instrumental in shaping what Shutterstock has become, and opening the site up to other artists was one of the first. I had taken pictures of everything I could find (including my cat, Pixel), and decided creating a marketplace was essential to scaling the company and meeting demand. This meant Shutterstock was global almost from the beginning. It also resulted in much better images than I alone could produce.

I’ve met some incredibly talented contributors over the years, and we’ll be sharing an exciting program we’re launching to celebrate these artists later today. Thank you to all who’ve made the last decade possible, including our 262 employees. I can’t wait to see what the next decade brings for Shutterstock and our family of brands (Footage, Bigstock, Offset & Skillfeed).